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Thursday, September 07, 2017

09/07 Links Pt2: Jerusalem Was Never Holy to Muslims; Yes, Julian Assange Is An Antisemite

Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs president Amb. Dore Gold delivered a multi-media presentation on September 5, 2017, in London at the Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies (RUSI), titled, “The Struggle for Jerusalem in International Diplomacy.”
After crushing Bar Kokhba in 135, the Roman occupiers decided to annihilate all Jewish hope for Jerusalem. They decided to crush historical truth. They renamed Jerusalem with a new name – Aelia Capitolina, and they also gave Judea a new name – Syria-Palestina. This is the actual origin of the name Palestine. That was the methodology then and that is the methodology being used today, attacking our very identity and twisting history. Today it’s called the delegitimization of Israel. Well, it didn’t work then and it’s not going to work now.
Israel’s ambassador to the United Kingdom, Mark Regev, delivered opening remarks. Chairing the event was Col. Richard Kemp, an associate fellow at RUSI and former commander of UK forces in Afghanistan.
On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of Jerusalem’s unification – and in response to UN resolutions that sought to deny the Jewish connection to Jerusalem – Amb. Gold created an original, world-class presentation of 3,000 years of Jewish history in Jerusalem, with the assistance of Israel’s finest, state of the art multi-media technology. This exciting sensory experience brings sacred sites and ancient documents to life while telling the story of the Jewish people’s unbreakable connection to Israel and Jerusalem through the ages.

From a multi-media presentation by Amb. Dore Gold - September 5, 2017

Jerusalem In Islam: Mordechai Kedar

In an address entitled “Jerusalem: Whose City Is It?” Prof. Mordechai Kedar (Bar Ilan University) analyses the early history of the Islamic religion and how it relates to Jerusalem and the Temple Mount. From the ZOA in New York City (2017).

It’s time to end the propaganda myth that Jerusalem is holy to Muslims.
Jerusalem was the capital of the Jewish nation under King David and other Jewish kings for hundreds of years. The U.S. Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995 stated: “In 1996, the State of Israel will celebrate the 3,000th anniversary of the Jewish presence in Jerusalem since King David’s entry.”
Jerusalem was never the capital of any other nation. After the Arab conquest of Israel in 716 CE, the Arabs made Ramla their capital – not Jerusalem.
Jerusalem is the Jewish people’s holiest city. Jerusalem’s Old City (in the eastern portion of Jerusalem, the real Jerusalem) contains the millennia old Jewish quarter and Judaism’s holiest site, the Temple Mount where the First and Second Jewish Temples stood, long before the birth of Islam. And eastern Jerusalem also contains the world’s oldest and largest (3,000 years-old) Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives. (Eastern Jerusalem is the real Jerusalem throughout Biblical and human history; Western Jerusalem was built in recent years.)
Jerusalem is mentioned almost 700 times in the Torah, the Jewish holy books. Jerusalem is never mentioned in the Koran – not even once.
Throughout the millennia, Jews always pray for Jerusalem 20 times each day, remember Jerusalem in holiday and wedding ceremonies, and pray facing Jerusalem. By contrast, Muslims pray facing Mecca. There are no Muslim prayers for Jerusalem.

The far-left’s blatant selectivity and hypocrisy speak volumes.
Yet bifocal lenses aren’t sufficient, either. Trifocals are needed — because in recent times, the greatest physical threat to Jews has come from jihadists.
Consider the fact that every fatal attack against Jews in Europe in recent years has been carried out by Islamic extremists. From the kosher supermarket in Paris to a Jewish school in Toulouse, from the Jewish Museum in Brussels to the synagogue in Copenhagen, from the murders of Ilan Halimi and Sarah Halimi in Paris to the Israelis (and Bulgarian) killed in Burgas — these attacks were all perpetrated by jihadists.
Add to that the genocidal ambitions of Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas, the incendiary Salafist teachings in many madrassas, and the ubiquitous antisemitism in important segments of the Arab media, and you see how serious this threat truly is.
So, by all means, let’s express our utter revulsion when Nazis march in Charlottesville, and let’s speak up when the occupant of the Oval Office stunningly fails to provide moral clarity in confronting such an unfolding drama.
But, equally, the same Jewish outrage needs to be manifested when the leader of Iran seeks a world without Israel, when Hezbollah’s top cleric calls for the mass murder of Jews, when Jewish children are shot to death in front of a Jewish school for the simple fact that they are Jews, and when groups on American campuses single out Israel alone for delegitimization and disappearance.
Finally — if things weren’t complicated enough — we also must not lose sight of the seemingly bizarre alliances that emerge. These include the alliance between the far-left and Islamic extremists regarding Israel and Zionism, and the alliance between the far-right and Islamic extremists on Holocaust denial and demonization of Jews.
In other words, it’s a time for those people who genuinely care about antisemitism to open their eyes wide — and not allow ideological or partisan thinking to narrow their field of vision.

Israeli president Reuven Rivlin and German president Frank-Walter Steinmeier unveiled a memorial in Munich today commemorating the 11 Israeli athletes murdered by Palestinian terrorists in the city’s Olympic village 45 years ago this week. The memorial cost more than $2.7 million to erect, and features black-and-white photographs of the victims, including a German police officer killed in a botched attempt to rescue the hostages. Both leaders called the tribute “overdue,” and it is. It’s also, sadly, deeply misguided and offensive.
Nowhere on the new memorial does it say that the Germans were tipped off about the pending attack three weeks before it happened by a credible source in Beirut, but failed to do anything.
Nowhere is it recorded that, as Der Spiegel uncovered five years ago, German officials met with Black September’s Abu Youssef, the attack’s mastermind, just months after the massacre in order to “create a new basis of trust,” agreed to upgrade the group’s status from terrorist organization to resistance group, and allowed the PLO to send a colleague of the Munich murderers as its emissary to Bonn.
Nowhere does it say that, as newly revealed documents show, the German authorities at the time refused to stop the Olympic games even as the hostage situation was unfolding in large part because they had nothing better to air on TV.
Nowhere does it indicate that, as we’ve learned from the testimony of the head of the Mossad at the time of the attack, Tzvi Zamir, the German authorities made no effort whatsoever to save not only the lives of the Israelis but of their own police officers as well. “The Germans,” Zamir told then prime minister Golda Meir, “do not value human life.”

Movements aimed at boycotting Israel were delivered a blow by the London municipality recently after it rejected a request that the upcoming London Tel Aviv Festival, TLV in LDN, be forbidden from taking place.
With the decision, London is preparing to paint its streets blue and white at the end of the week as the UK capital gears for the largest Israeli festival ever to be held in England.
Dozens of Israeli artists will take part in the festival as they exhibit before the Brits the creative and inventive side of Israel.
Up until the very last minute, various movements dedicated to boycotting Israel attempted to tarnish the festival and pressure the authorities to altogether cancel the initiative spearheaded by the Israeli Minister of Strategic Affairs Gilad Erdan.
Stepping up their efforts to ostracize Israel in the international domain, the boycott movements designed posters calling for its boycott and requested permission from the authorities to hang them on central bus stops in London and the city’s underground.
“London is against apartheid,” was the main slogan scrawled on the banners and posters calling on passersby to boycott the festival.

A Jewish candidate for Illinois governor dropped his running mate over a disagreement about the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel.
“Growing up with an Israeli mother, grandparents who survived the Holocaust, and great-grandparents who did not survive, issues related to the safety and security of the Jewish people are deeply personal to me,” Daniel Biss, a state senator, and a mathematician, said in a statement Wednesday on his campaign website explaining what he said was a “difficult” decision to part ways with Chicago Alderman Carlos Ramirez-Rosa just a week after announcing their ticket.
“I strongly support a two-state solution,” Biss said. “I support Israel’s right to exist, and I support Israel as the homeland of the Jewish people. I also care deeply about justice for Palestinians and believe that a vision for the Middle East must include political and economic freedom for Palestinians. That’s why I oppose the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement, or BDS, as I believe it moves us further away from a peaceful solution.”
Biss said that he had raised BDS in the interview process and he understood that Ramirez-Rosa opposed it. In a statement to the Chicago Sun-Times, Ramirez suggested that he opposed BDS on the local and state level — he notably voted against it in a council vote in 2015 — but supported it at the federal level.
“The difference of opinion we have on the role the BDS movement plays at the federal level would make it impossible to continue moving forward as a ticket,” Ramirez-Rosa said.

The mayor of Germany’s capital, Michael Müller, will personally stop all city support and space for groups that advocate the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions campaign targeting the Jewish state, according to a Wednesday statement from the Central Council of Jews in Germany.
The Berlin mayor said, “BDS stands with antisemitic signs in front of Berlin businesses. Those are intolerable methods from the Nazi period. We will do everything possible to withdraw money and rooms for BDS’s anti-Israel agitation.”
Müller said he would also take possible legal actions against the “hate-driven al-Quds day march.” He said what would “be best is a ban” of the annual Iranian regime march calling for the destruction of Israel.
The mayor, who has been under fire for months for his inaction toward BDS, said he will ensure there are “at a minimum strict ordinances and prosecution of all offenses” at the al-Quds march.
The city currently bans the display of Hezbollah flags at the rally attended by Islamists, radical leftists, neo-Nazis, and Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine supporters. Müller said he will “continue to make clear his position regarding Israel and against antisemitism and racism in my city government.”

Jewish high school volunteers in Cape Town were confronted by anti-Zionist posters and slogans when they arrived at a public school in the city on Tuesday to participate in an ambitious building project.
The students, from the Herzlia School, represent an ongoing outreach project to Vista High, a public secondary school. Herzlia students have undertaken to upgrade Vista High’s library, build a playground area and engage in learning exchanges. But when they arrived at the campus, they were confronted by what a senior member of staff told parents was “a number of anti-Zionist posters” prominently displayed in the office window of Vista High’s deputy principal.
Among the slogans on display was “Yes to Judaism, No to Zionism” – a favorite theme of the tiny anti-Zionist Neturei Karta sect that has been adopted by the global BDS movement – and “Israel is a terrorist state guilty of ethnic cleansing in Palestine.”
“These posters were clearly designed to offend, resulting in our pupils and staff feeling extremely uncomfortable,” Geoff Cohen, Herzlia’s Director of Education, wrote in his note to parents. After being alerted to the posters, Cohen went to Vista High School where he demanded to see the principal. The principal told Cohen that both she and the Vista High students were deeply appreciative of Herzlia’s outreach, placing the blame for the posters squarely on her deputy principal. According to Cohen, the deputy principal was “completely intransigent” despite being repeatedly asked to remove the posters.
Cohen praised the Herzlia students for “getting on with the job at hand showing incredible maturity, dignity and diplomacy.” At no point did students or staff face any physical danger, he said.

On May 10, 2017, a group called Students Supporting Israel hosted five Israel Defense Forces reservists at the University of California, Irvine. Midway throughout the discussion, forty members of Students for Justice in Palestine, a group vehemently opposed to the Jewish state, broke into loud and derisive chants, disrupting the event. Panelists and Jewish audience members alike were escorted out of the building by campus security, their safety at risk.
This, sadly, is hardly news these days; assaults like these happen regularly on college campuses across the nation whenever anyone challenging the steely dogmas of the regressive left shows up and urges a free and unfettered debate. What is new is the refreshing response of the university’s administration: This week, the university announced that it will sanction SJP with disciplinary probation for two years, during which the group must meet regularly with the Dean of Students to discuss the importance of free speech as well as consult with the administration before hosting any campus event of its own. “Any further violations of university policy,” read the university’s statement, “may result in suspension or a revocation of the organization’s status.”
UCI, read the statement, “welcomes all opinions and encourages a free exchange of ideas–in fact, we defend free speech as one of our bedrock principles as a public university. Yet, we must protect everyone’s right to express themselves without disruption. This concept is clearly articulated in our policies and campus messaging. We will hold firm in enforcing it.”
Amen to that. And if elected officials of all stripes want to help public universities enforce the most sacred of all academic cornerstones, the ability to speak and listen without malice and without being silenced, let them begin by demanding that a commitment to protecting free speech be made a pre-condition for any and all federal funding. The alternative is much too costly for our struggling democracy to afford.

StandWithUs and Artists 4 Israel are launching a campaign to protest Pink Floyd frontman Roger Waters for promoting hate, lies, and censorship regarding Israel.
The campaign is taking place in Newark, Brooklyn, Hartford, and Boston, and will include digital billboard truck ads, public displays, and graffiti artists creating unique t-shirts and other anti-hate artwork outside Waters' "Us + Them" concerts in those cities. The campaign will also include a jumbo 15-foot blow-up Pinnochio doll holding a sign that reads: "Roger Waters: We Dont Need Your Lies About Israel!"
Waters performs on September 7 in Newark, NJ; Sept. 12 in Brooklyn, NY; Sept. 24 in Hartford, CT and Sept. 27 and 28 in Boston, MA. The truck with the digital ad will circle these cities during the day and arrive at the concert venue by 6pm and join the graffiti artists and Pinnochio doll.
All of the digital truck ads will read:
Roger Waters: We Don't Need Your Hate & Censorship Against Israel
All of the artwork for the campaign comes from street artists who oppose Waters' hateful rhetoric and lies about Israelis, as well as his efforts to shut down cultural and artistic exchanges between Israel and the rest of the world.

A right-wing pro-Israel group in the US is turning up the heat on New Jersey Senator Cory Booker for not supporting legislation that seeks to slash funding to the Palestinians Authority until it cuts off salaries to terrorists.
The Committee for Israel released an attack ad Wednesday targeting the Democrat for voting to block the Taylor Force Act from advancing to a vote on the Senate floor.
The ad, titled “Under the Bus,” invokes widespread speculation that Booker is mulling a run for president in 2020.
“Stabbings, shootings, suicide bombings. Israelis and Americans killed by Palestinian terrorists, and we’re paying for it,” the narrator says. “Finally, Democrats and Republicans are coming together to stop it.”
At that point, b-roll footage shows Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, a Democrat and co-sponsor of the bill, standing with Senator John McCain, a Republican of Arizona.

Assange has already spoken about a “powerful and well-funded domestic lobby” – which echoes some antisemitic conspiracy theories – but why did he just characterize those objecting to Craig Murray as rich ultra- Zionist bullies?
The person suing Murray is Jake Wallis Simons, Associate Editor of the Daily Mail Online. He is part Jewish and there is no evidence he is rich.
Without saying the J-word, I believe Julian Assange is suggesting it is rich Jooooooos who are the bullies behind the attempt to bankrupt his friend. At the very least, he has endorsed Craig Murray’s view that Israel is illegitimate.
Even if you like the idea of whistle-blowers, do not be fooled by Julian Assange. He is not a good person.

Allegations that the Burmese / Myanmar military is engaged in a brutal offensive against the Muslim Rohingya minority are, quite rightly, appearing in the international media.
But what does it say about The Independent and its reporter Bethan McKernan when Israel becomes the focus of the Myanmar story?
According to The Independent:Israel is under fire from human rights groups for the continued sale of weaponry to the Burmese junta after intensified violence against the country’s Rohingya Muslim minority.
More than 100 tanks, as well as boats and light weapons, have been sold to the Burmese government by Israeli arms companies, investigations by several rights watchdogs have found.
Yet, The Independent fails to name any of these human rights groups or watchdogs. Instead, the story is sourced to Middle East Eye, a site that publishes among others, Richard Silverstein, an anti-Zionist blogger with a reputation for spreading anti-Israel stories and conspiracy theories with a complete disregard for fact-checking.
Supplying arms to any country that may misuse them is a significant moral and ethical issue. Israel is not immune from this legitimate debate as a weapons exporter to countries that include Myanmar. That the Israeli High Court is to rule later this month on whether to ban arms sales to Myanmar is an indicator that ethical concerns are part of Israeli decisions on weapons exports. It is also this transparency that brought the story to the attention of the press in the first instance.
Israel isn’t the only country to supply arms to Myanmar over the years but it is the only one that The Independent is bothered about. Other suppliers include or have included Russia, China, Ukraine, India and Singapore.

CST’s 2016 Antisemitic Discourse report included an example of antisemitism in the mainstream British media. The article in question, published in February 2016 and written by Daily Telegraph assistant editor Jeremy Warner, was critical of Paul Singer, a well-known Jew who’s the founder of Elliott Management Hedge Fund, for refusing to accept a deal on debt relief.
The original Daily Telegraph article opened thusly:“Latter day Shylocks at Elliott Management allowing, Argentina will soon have renewed access to international capital markets.”
Near the end of the article, Warner again evoked Shylock:“Debt restructuring provides a fourth option, yet as both Argentina and Greece have discovered, the trouble with borrowed money is that adjusting its value takes difficult negotiation, frequently obstructed by aggressively litigious hedgies such as Mr Singer demanding their pound of flesh.”
The use of ’Shylocks‘ and ’pound of flesh‘ is of course a reference to the antisemitic caricature of Shylock from Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice.

Readers are not told that the man portrayed as “a prominent human rights defender” is actually an anti-Israel political activist with links to the International Solidarity Movement (ISM). No information is provided concerning the agenda and activities of the non-transparently funded ‘Youth Against Settlements’ group which has in the past – along with Amro himself – been promoted in BBC reports (see ‘related articles’ below).
The absence of that background information is particularly relevant given that in the later paragraphs of this report the BBC chose to deviate from its supposed subject matter.“Mr Amro is also currently being tried by an Israeli military court on several charges that include calling for illegal protests and obstructing the official duties of soldiers.
He has rejected the charges, which Amnesty has described as “baseless”.”
The charges against Amro also include several counts of assault, incitement and damage to property. As in any country, it is of course the role of the court – rather than a political NGO that the BBC elects to amplify – to decide whether or not those charges are “baseless”.
The final paragraph of the report is similarly gratuitous and unrelated to the story supposedly being told in this report.“In Hebron, where Mr Amro is based, several hundred Jewish settlers live in heavily-guarded enclaves surrounded by some 200,000 Palestinians. The settlements are considered illegal under international law, though Israel disputes this.”

Not only was the Star’s reporting inaccurate, it was grossly unfair. In fact, Israel has only begun construction on one new “west bank” settlement, the first in 25 years, and not any more. Furthermore, the Star’s statement was subjective and the author’s opinion was disguised as news. If you ask the Israeli Prime Minister, members of his administration, and a large subset of the Israeli population, they will argue that they have not turned their backs on a two-state solution and support a final peace accord with the Palestinians. They will likely contend that settlement building isn’t an obstacle to peace or the two-state solution, for a myriad of reasons.
Following our intervention with the Star, Canada’s most-read daily newspaper acknowledged their error and expressed regret for inserting inappropriate opinions into their reporting. The Star published the following correction on September 2:

We thank the Toronto Star for being receptive to our concerns and for setting the record straight in a prompt and professional manner.
This is just one example, of many, that display our approach, our impact and our efficacy as we confront media bias against Israel. Please make a meaningful donation today and help support our continued efforts.

Henley did not intervene to explain to audiences why, after nearly 70 years, the “majority of the Gazans” are still classified as refugees or how their status is different from that of refugees in the rest of the world. Neither did he remind audiences that Israel disengaged from the Gaza Strip 12 years ago and – predictably – did not clarify that the territory is not ‘occupied’. Shawa closed her unchallenged and unquestioned monologue with the promotion of claims she did not support with statistical evidence.
Shawa: “You know, this pressure will simply lead to extremely negative phenomena. Young people are committing suicide. I mean I cannot talk about rates or numbers but we are seeing this every day. We are seeing more crime. We never heard of so much crime in the last years; only a few months we’re hearing so many incidents. And this is really worrying and again, people have the right to be angry.”
Henley concluded his guest’s appearance with a description no less inadequate than the one in his introduction:
Henley: “Najla – a mother of two young children with impeccable English who lives in Gaza.”
As we see, throughout this lengthy item BBC World Service listeners heard nothing of the terrorism perpetrated by Hamas against Israeli civilians and of the link between that and Israel’s counter-terrorism measures along its border with the Gaza Strip. While they did hear long and detailed descriptions of the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip, the absence of any adequate explanation of how the lengthy dispute between Hamas and Fatah has adversely affected electricity, water, medical and sewage services in the territory means that listeners would be quite likely to reach the erroneous conclusion that those issues are connected to the ‘blockade’ which is mentioned repeatedly.
However, the item was not over yet and its final section will be discussed in part two of this post.

Jane Kinninmont closed the item with another comment that did nothing to enhance audience understanding of the stated subject matter of this item.Kinninmont: “Absolutely. Palestinians are preoccupied with daily fire-fighting. But it is interesting they have some of the highest rates of social media usage in the world. When people can actually get online – when they have enough electricity to do so – because of the isolation and immobility many Palestinians are trying to be politically active online, trying to change opinion here in the West.”
So as we see, in this very long item the BBC World Service promoted a carefully framed picture of the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip which once again failed to adequately clarify its background. While excluding Hamas terrorism from audience view, the item did however steer listeners towards the erroneous belief that the crisis involving electricity, water, medical and sewage has some connection to the blockade imposed by Israel, while completely ignoring the topic of why that measure is necessary.

A planned Middle East outpost of the Guggenheim remains unbuilt as the Louvre Abu Dhabi readies for its opening, with the New York-based museum acknowledging that “no contract has been awarded” to build the $200-million project over a decade after its launch.
The Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, envisioned in 2006 as a deconstructive jumble of Arabic features and modern design by architect Frank Gehry, was to sit near the Louvre outpost on Abu Dhabi’s Saadiyat Island. But the Guggenheim told The Associated Press that nothing has been done to the site since a foundation was poured in 2011.
“There is no construction on Guggenheim Abu Dhabi and no contract has been awarded,” the Guggenheim said in a statement.
It’s a far cry from the fanfare that greeted the museum’s launch in 2006, at a ceremony attended by then-Guggenheim director Thomas Krens and the late actor Dennis Hopper. Krens, Hopper, and actors Laurence Fishburne and Jeremy Irons even took a motorcycle trip across the United Arab Emirates.

FIFA opened a disciplinary case against the German soccer federation after fans chanted Nazi slogans during a World Cup qualifying game in the Czech Republic.
German officials have said the fans did not buy tickets through its official process for last Friday’s game in Prague.
FIFA said “several incidents” are under investigation and a case is also open against the Czech federation. Home teams are responsible for security at their stadium.
Verdicts and sanctions should be decided in late September.
About 200 German supporters chanted slogans during their team’s 2-1 win, and verbally abused forward Timo Werner, who scored the first goal.
German soccer president Reinhard Grindel, a member of the ruling committees at FIFA and UEFA, said European federations must work together more closely to control ticket distribution.
Following the incident, Germany’s national soccer team coach Joachim Loew dubbed as “shameful” Nazi-era chanting by a hardcore group of “so-called fans.”

If there was ever any doubt that Tel Aviv is the beating heart of the startup nation, a new report by Tel Aviv Global settles it. Not only does Tel Aviv have 2,000 high-tech companies, but one out of every 10 jobs in the city is in the high-tech sector.
The report is based on data conducted by IVC Research in preparation for the DLD Tel Aviv Innovation Festival taking place this week.
Tel Aviv Global is a municipal agency that manages various incentives for entrepreneurs setting up in the city.
The new report points out that the city has doubled the number of international R&D centers over the past five years from 35 in 2012 to 73 in 2017.
Well-known international companies that now having a tech presence in Tel Aviv include Visa, Renault-Nissan, Bosch, MasterCard, Google, Facebook, Amazon, Coca-Cola, Microsoft, AOL, Samsung, Siemens, PayPal, Deutsche Telekom, Citibank, Intel, Yahoo, Barclays, IBM, and Apple.
These international R&D centers provide over 6,200 jobs, according to the report. The 2,000 total high-tech companies in Tel Aviv, moreover, constitute about a quarter of the number of companies in the high-tech sector in Israel overall.

US chip giant Intel Corp. said Thursday it has outfitted eight National Football League stadiums in the US with high-definition cameras that will allow fans to see the game from every angle and create 360-degree highlights for a more action-packed experience.
The cameras — which are ready for the 2017 season — are equipped with Intel’s “freeD” technology that was developed by Israeli startup Replay Technologies, founded in 2011 and which Intel bought last year.
The eight stadiums that have been newly equipped with the technology are those of the Arizona Cardinals, Carolina Panthers, Cleveland Browns, Indianapolis Colts, Kansas City Chiefs, Minnesota Vikings, New England Patriots and the Washington Redskins, Intel said in a statement.
These stadiums will join the home stadiums of the Baltimore Ravens, Houston Texans and San Francisco 49ers that have already installed the Intel technology.
The freeD system allows broadcasters to freeze video, rotate the angle of view and zoom in on the action. It has been used in other sporting events, including the NBA and Olympic Games.

Robert Kraft had two unforgettable comebacks this year.
The first came in Super Bowl LI, when his New England Patriots overcame a 28-3 deficit in the second half to beat the Atlanta Falcons in overtime.
And the second comeback was Kraft’s return in June to Israel, his second home, with a delegation of 18 Hall of Fame players whom he hosted, among them Jim Brown, Joe Montana and Roger Staubach.
Kraft, who is Jewish, has been heavily invested in Israel, both financially and emotionally, and is close friends with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He’s also essentially an ambassador of football in the region, and opened the Kraft Family Sports Campus in Jerusalem. That 25-acre, multi-sports venue — which includes the first three regulation-sized football fields in the Middle East — is reflective of his commitment to grow the game in the region.
“My life is about trying to, at this point, only do things I love and I’m passionate about, and be with people I love and feel connected to,” said Kraft, 76, who was joined at the ribbon-cutting ceremony by three of his four sons and NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell.
“I first came to Israel 54 years ago — even though I think I’m 35,” Kraft said. “It was on my honeymoon. Someone had given us a present. We came here, and it was just an amazing experience for me. I love America, and I’m so lucky to have been born there and be a U.S. citizen, but when I came here I also learned that this place was so special.”
Other “Gold Jackets” making the trip were Hall of Famers Lem Barney, Jerome Bettis, Cris Carter, Dave Casper, Eric Dickerson, Marshall Faulk, Mean Joe Greene, Willie Lanier, Andre Reed, Mike Singletary, Bruce Smith, John Stallworth, Andre Tippett, Aeneas Williams, and Ron Yary. Players were joined on the weeklong trip by their significant others.
“I tell people, ‘You don’t have to be Jewish to go to Israel,’ ” Tippett said. “Jerusalem represents so many other religions, and there are so many things there to see, it covers the whole spectrum.”

As the world marks the 16th anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks next week, Jewish National Fund (JNF) will host and participate in various memorial events in the US to honor American first responders.
JNF, which in 2009 constructed the 9/11 Living Memorial in the foothills of Jerusalem, will join in the events as an expression of “gratitude,” the organization said on Tuesday.
“We are very pleased to recognize our brave first responders for their contributions and sacrifices to our nation and to our local communities, and to share our mutual respect while we honor those who fell during the attacks,” said Edward Blank, a member of JNF’s board of directors, who donated the Jerusalem memorial.
JNF will host public tributes to first-responders in Baltimore; Beverly Hills, Calif.; Long Island, NY; Los Angeles; Miami; and Westchester, NY.
Hundreds of Jewish students, lay leaders, rabbis and Jewish community members will participate in the events.

A unique 7,200-year-old clay vessel recently unearthed in the Jordan Valley by researchers from Israel and Germany may represent the oldest evidence yet of ancient class structure as it relates to food storage rituals in the Near East.
The relic was discovered at the Tel Tsaf archeological site during digs overseen by Prof. Danny Rosenberg of the Zinman Institute of Archeology at the University of Haifa, and Dr. Florian Klimscha of the German Archeological Institute in Berlin.
According to Rosenberg, the clay vessel provides unprecedented insights into ancient political and socioeconomic class structure among elites during a period that remains somewhat mysterious.
“Until now, discussions of the early transition to complex societies in this area have focused mainly on later periods, and on the connection between the development of socioeconomic elites and the ability of certain individuals or families to store large quantities of food – beyond their own needs – for survival,” Rosenberg said on Wednesday.
“In this context, the findings at Tel Tsaf provide firsthand evidence of the early connection between food storage on a large scale and the observance of a ritual associated with the successful storage and preservation of agricultural yields.” Located near the Jordan River, the Tel Tsaf site was first documented in the late 1940s.
It was subsequently excavated during the late 1970s, and later between 2004 and 2007.

Hebrew ceased to be anyone’s native tongue around the 2nd century CE. In 19th-century Europe, Jews attempted to revive Hebrew as a modern language, but only as a literary one. It was the quixotic and determined Eliezer Ben-Yehudah who first envisioned bringing the language fully back to life. Lewis Glinert, author of the recently published The Story of Hebrew, explains what this entailed:In a Jewish section of Jerusalem, in 1885, Ben-Yehudah and his wife Dvorah were fearful for their child: they were rearing him in Hebrew, an unheard-of idea. They had taken in a wet-nurse, a dog, and a cat; the nurse agreed to coo in Hebrew, while the dog and the cat—one male, the other female—would give the infant Itamar an opportunity to hear Hebrew adjectives and verbs inflected for gender. All other languages were to be silenced.
When Itamar turned three, however, he had still not uttered a word. Family friends protested. Surely this mother-tongue experiment would produce an imbecile. And then, the story goes, Itamar’s father marched in and upon finding the boy’s mother singing him a lullaby in Russian, flew into a rage. But then he fell silent, as the child was screaming: “Abba, Abba!” (Daddy, Daddy!). Frightened little Itamar had just begun the reawakening of Hebrew as a mother tongue. . . .
Speaking Hebrew was actually nothing new in itself; it had long been a lingua franca among Yiddish-, Ladino-, and Arabic-speaking Jewish traders (and refugees). The markets of the Holy Land had resonated with Hebrew for hundreds of years. But a pidgin is not a mother tongue. Ben-Yehudah was a born philologist; he plucked words from ancient texts and coined his own, hoping one day to launch Hebrew’s answer to the Oxford English Dictionary. The birth of Itamar gave him an opportunity to put his experiment with Hebrew to the test. Could they rear the boy in Hebrew? Could they shield him from hearing other tongues? And, just as critically, could the family be a model for others?

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